THE END OF NEWTBY GAIL COLLINSNEW YORK TIMESNewt is reportedly planning to drop out of the presidential race on Tuesday. The crushing blow was the Delaware primary, where the Gingrich campaign had hoped to win a dramatic come-from-behind victory under the theory that only a couple of Republicans would actually vote and that they would be the same people who once nominated Christine O’Donnell for the Senate.
Must-Read Op-Eds for Wednesday, April 25, 2012
Must-Read Op-Eds for Tuesday, April 24, 2012
ROMNEY’S PRINCIPLED, RADICAL VIEW FOR AMERICABY E.J. DIONNE WASHINGTON POSTHere’s Romney’s problem. His best strategy is to cast President Obama as a failure because the economy has not come all the way back from the implosion of 2008. [H]e is calling on voters to share his faith that our difficulties would go away if the state simply got out of the way, allowed the market do its thing and counted on the success of the successful to lift up everyone else. Romney’s philosophical inclinations give the president ample room to speak to non-ideological, non-utopian voters, the 10 percent or 15 percent who will decide this election. ILLINOIS IS RUNNING OUT OF TIME AND MONEYBY GEORGE WILL WASHINGTON POSTAfter trying to tax Illinois to governmental solvency and economic dynamism, Pat Quinn, a Democrat who has been governor since 2009, now says “our rendezvous with reality has arrived.” Actually, Illinois is still reality-averse, so Americans may soon learn the importance of the freedom to fail in a system of competitive federalism. Illinois, a stronghold of public-employees unions, “is on pace to spend nearly $1 billion on retiree health care benefits in fiscal year 2013, more than double what it spent in 2003. Worse yet, these liabilities are growing more than twice as fast as tax revenues.” GINGRICH DROPPING OUT? GOOD RIDDANCE.BY JONATHAN BERNSTEINWASHINGTON POST[Newt] was never, as some learned to their embarrassment over the last few months (and as new Republican members of the House learned to their surprise in 1995), much of a conservative. He was a radical, always eagerly embracing whatever struck his fancy at the moment or whatever he believed he needed to believe in order to achieve his goals, which were usually about destroying someone ... With any luck, conservatives will have learned their lesson and they’ll finally exile him to wherever disgraced politicians go. WHY WOMEN MAKE LESS THAN MENBY KAY HYMOWITZ WALL STREET JOURNALOne stubborn fact of the labor market argues against the idea. That is the gender-hours gap, close cousin of the gender-wage gap. Most people have heard that full-time working American women earn only 77 cents for every dollar earned by men. Yet these numbers don't take into account the actual number of hours worked. And it turns out that women work fewer hours than men. Today, childless 20-something women do earn more than their male peers. But most are likely to cut back their hours after they have kids, giving men the hours, and income, advantage. Activists tend to offer two solutions for this state of affairs. First is that fathers should take equal responsibility for child care. [T]he second proposed solution for the hours gap: generous family-leave and child-care policies.THE ROMNEY OPPORTUNITYEDITORIALWALL STREET JOURNAL[H]e'll find it easier to defeat Mr. Obama's argument—even to transcend it—if he offers his own economic narrative that reaches back to the mistakes of the Bush Administration to explain how we got here and how he can get us out. Politically, this will help shield Mr. Romney from Mr. Obama's inevitable attempt to link the Republican to the Bush era. Coming from outside Washington and with his business background, Mr. Romney can make the case for an economic restoration that corrects the mistakes of both the Bush and Obama eras. To win the GOP nomination, Mr. Romney has shown reserves of tenacity and discipline. To win the White House, he'll need to show a larger vision and the nerve to pursue it. I WAS WRONG ABOUT DICK CHENEYBY KARL ROVEWALL STREET JOURNAL[George W. Bush] knew I was opposed [to Cheney] and invited me to make the case against his idea. I came to our meeting armed with eight political objections. Mr. Bush heard me out but with a twist: I explained my objections with Mr. Cheney sitting, mute and expressionless, next to the governor. The next day, Mr. Bush called to say I was right. There would be real political problems if he chose Mr. Cheney. So solve them, he said. Politics was my responsibility. His job was different: to select his best partner in the White House and a person the country would have confidence in if something terrible happened to him. The country was better served by Mr. Bush's decision than by my advice. There's a lesson there for Mr. Romney. Choose the best person for the job. Leave the politics to the staff.GEORGE W. BUSH'S FRIENDS ON THE LEFTBY JOE SCARBOROUGHPOLITICOFor a president who left office loathed by progressives and most of polite society, George W. Bush continues to gain admirers among those whom liberals admire most. U2 frontman and legendary do-gooder Bono shocked many when he told Jon Stewart that George W. Bush did an "amazing" job in his work involving AIDS in Africa. ... But reading this lavish praise from the likes of the Dalai Lama, Bono and Bob Geldof should remind narrow-minded leftists who view Mr. Bush through ideological blinders that turning political opponents into cartoon characters is the work of fools.MITT ROMNEY'S DEBT TO NEWT GINGRICHBY MOLLY BALLTHE ATLANTIC By behaving childishly and running totally amateurish campaigns, [Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum] made Romney look good. Next to Santorum's inability to stay on message, Romney's gaffes looked minor. Next to Gingrich's petulant posturing, Romney looked like a grown-up. Next to both men's improvised, bare-bones efforts, Romney's flawed operation looked like the Cadillac of political campaigns. In losing in the most undignified manner possible, Gingrich made Romney shine. And for that, Romney owes Gingrich his gratitude.